REAL ESTATE Law  

The lender cannot simply foreclose on a property where there is a death of a co-owner of a mortgaged property. Similarly, the lender cannot foreclose on a property where a transfer occurs after the death from the decedent to a spouse or to their children. However, if one does not continue to pay on the mortgage, the lender will be able to foreclose on the Property.

Under the Michigan Seller Disclosure Act, it is very unlikely that this maintenance defect is a defect that should have been disclosed by the seller. Unless the maintenance defect was one that affected the structural or mechanical condition of the property, it does not appear as though the Seller was obligated to disclose the maintenance defect.  I would say your money is better spent on new paint rather than hiring an attorney to try and recover from the prior owner

It’s highly unlikely that you’d prevail at court by suing a licensed professional appraiser for their opinion of value despite the fact that it negatively impacted your sales price. Therefore, I’d save your money on attorney fees. The duty of the appraiser is not to you, but to the buyer and to the lender. Banks make their decisions to lend based upon these opinions. Instead, the provisions of your purchase agreement should have given you, as the seller, the discretion to proceed with the sale or not. Another option would have been to require the buyer to come up with the difference between the appraised value and the agreed upon purchase price. Finally, you could have disputed the appraisal by having another appraisal. However, in that instance the decision to proceed is up to the buyer since they are the one obtaining the mortgage.

In the end, you control your own deal. If you did not want to sign the agreement, you did not have to sign the contract. However, by signing the agreement, you agreed to the terms therein. You could file a complaint with LARA – State of MI, but being from out state now, it will only serve as a complaint. Suing the realtor would be an option if you had better evidence of malfeasance. Unfortunately, accepting a deal that you later regret does not necessarily mean that the realtor “ripped” you off.

Many areas of law overlap – real life does not happen in a vacuum and neither do fact patterns or legal outcomes. To use your example above, we may have a client who is dealing with probating a will, but then there are issues as to how title to a residence is held.  There may be a tenant residing in the home of the decedent, or a mortgage remains outstanding after a homeowner’s death.  Sometimes we may find ourselves in circuit court, probate court and even district court all because of a probate case, but one that has underlying real estate legal issues.  The same will hold true for other areas of law  as involving divorce matters, contract matters, and business matters. In our world, real estate law serves as the hub of a wheel intersecting with other legal areas or ‘spokes.’